


Crowd Control

by EldritchTribble



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Belligerent Sexual Tension, Fade to Black, M/M, Solid!Odo, THEY'RE IN THE CLOSET SEE WHAT I DID THERE, no concept of personal space, shenanigans in a storage closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9649235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchTribble/pseuds/EldritchTribble
Summary: Quick little one-shot. Odo’s intimidating body language has always flustered Quark, so he decides to give him a taste of his own medicine. Set sometime between 5x09: The Ascent and 5x12: The Begotten.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacebubble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacebubble/gifts).



> Inspired by a comment exchange @spacebubble and I had the other day. Odo crowding Quark is a wonderful thing and there's never enough of it, but do we ever get Quark crowding Odo, or even trying to? Quark's finally decided that it's payback time.

It was a Thursday and alpha shift had barely begun – by the estimation of any sentient being it was far too early for this sort of thing. Drowsily, Quark busied himself with sweeping the floor of his bar and polishing each tabletop to a fine luster. Despite these meticulous preparations, he reminded himself, it was not as if anyone except Morn would be coming in today. Brunt’s edict glinted at him from each corner, chiseled reproachfully in bronze lettering and somehow seeming to sneer at him in the liquidator’s unpleasant drawl.

The last thing he needed in his sleep-deprived, profits-poor state was another run-in with the constable. Part of him must have communicated this into the void, for said void proved all too happy to oblige. There was an insistent rap at the front door, which he had not yet unshuttered, much less unlocked. Sighing, he opened the shutters and turned an elaborate key in the lock, letting in a glowering manifestation of beige righteousness.

“Look, Odo, I’ll grant that you’re one depressed ex-changeling these days, but you can’t just barge in here at 0800 hours and start drinking away your troubles. Far be it from me to judge - I’d love to take your latinum - but unlike Morn, you’ve got work to do on this station…”

“…and I intend to carry it out,” Odo proclaimed in triumph, presenting a padd with something that looked suspiciously like a search warrant. Quark peered dismissively at it, habit guiding him to search out the fine print and nothing but the fine print.

“What could that possibly have to do with me or my establishment?” he inquired, reasoning that this constituted a fair enough question under the circumstances. Perhaps the coarse print explained it better, though.

Odo’s self-satisfied expression reached a new echelon of smugness. “Captain Sisko has given me express permission to search your storage closet for stockpiled jevonite,” he crowed.

“Last I heard, jevonite was a perfectly legal luxury commodity,” retorted Quark.

“So it is, but the Captain has reason to believe that among the raw jevonite you are holding several First Hebitian-era artifacts, which I need not remind you are habitually stolen from tombs and used to pay for Cardassian military expenses,” Odo explained, not without a certain condescension in his tone. “You would not want to be in possession of such items and be thought a collaborator, now, would you? Seems to me you’ve already lost one of your usual revenue streams in recent months.”

“Why, Odo,” Quark exclaimed sarcastically, “I had no idea you were so concerned about my professional reputation.” He tilted his head at a jaunty angle, feigning pleasant surprise.

An unimpressed Odo folded his arms and leaned menacingly into Quark’s personal space. “Are you going to let me search your closet or not?”

“That…looming thing you do doesn’t intimidate me, you know. You could always try asking nicely.”

“Really? For someone so fond of dramatic flourishes, I would have thought you’d approve.”

Quark swallowed hard. In fact, he _did_ approve – quite strongly and for all the wrong reasons – but he would rather donate his bar to Cousin Gaila than admit as much to Odo. He had not been lying when he said that Odo’s looming did not intimidate him: it merely did things to him that he would rather not discuss in polite company. Perhaps the constable was simply unaware of the effect it tended to have. However, confined to an immutable form as he now was, and subject to the various vagaries of said form, there was a chance that he would better understand the effect the ‘looming thing’ had if it were applied right back at him.

This could turn out to be a lot of fun, Quark realized.

Traipsing teasingly backward, Quark allowed Odo to follow him all the way to the closet door, even plastering his back against the doorknob in an unconvincing display of stubbornness. Naturally, Odo wasted no time in crowding him against the door – this was all going according to Quark’s plan, and he resolved not to allow himself to become too flustered this time. It would take all of his rapidly waning willpower, but he contented himself with the prospect of a good long-term investment. Annoyed with Quark’s attempt at intransigence, Odo made an instinctive motion with his fingers that suggested that he had briefly forgotten about being trapped in his solid form. Growling in frustration from the back of his throat, he sidled nearer and tried reaching around Quark’s middle, his other arm forming a right angle with the door. His fingertips landed treacherously close to Quark’s ear.

“I thought you said I could just ask nicely,” grumbled Odo from a few scant centimeters away.

“Well, so far, you haven’t,” Quark reminded him, forcing himself to take long, steadying breaths. Odo eyed him appraisingly, arrived at an answer he disliked but could tolerate, and withdrew his hand from around Quark’s midsection, planting it on the other side of his head instead.

“Quark, can I please search your storage closet for jevonite artifacts?” Odo requested, his tone steeped in facetious politeness and his head bobbing with the strain of maintaining the affectation.

“I’m not sure that you can, but you may,” replied Quark with a victorious grin. At least, he hoped it looked victorious what with the sheer force of concentration he had to muster.

“Hmph,” interjected Odo tersely. He threaded his arm around Quark in a renewed quest to grab the doorknob.

“To be honest, I’m not even sure that you can get at the doorknob at this point,” Quark commented with bad grace. “And you call yourself a security chief.”

“Just _move,_ damn you,” rasped Odo, “or I’ll put you away for obstruction of justice.”

“This is really bothering you, isn’t it?” observed Quark, snaking a hand up Odo’s side despite himself. There was only so much self-control he was capable of, after all. Odo regarded him questioningly at this development. “Being a solid and all,” Quark clarified. “Not being able to, say, get around me with a gooey appendage and pick the lock with it.”

To Quark’s consternation, Odo’s drive subsided almost immediately. He seemed deflated, and his gaze skirted Quark’s upon the merest scrutiny.

“Yes, Quark. It bothers me. Being a solid interferes with my duties. Does that make you happy?”

“You’d like that, I’m sure, but no, it doesn’t,” Quark admitted. To his own surprise, he found himself feeling sorry for his nemesis. Besides, anything that interfered with Odo’s duties meant that the indefinable game they had been playing since they first met would no longer pose a challenge; they would no longer be equally matched in their relentless tug of war between law and chaos. If that were to happen, it would be as if the universe itself had somehow gone off-kilter. One of his cooks must have just come to work, as he could have sworn that someone was chopping onions nearby.

Breaking out of his reverie, he recognized his chance and pounced on it. Quickly drying his eyes on a brocaded sleeve, he grabbed a dejected Odo by the shoulders and spun him in a semi-circle so that their positions were reversed. Reaching into a hidden pocket of his jacket, Quark drew out a slim key and opened the closet door with it, still gripping Odo’s shoulder with his other arm. He ushered Odo in and shut the door behind them.

“Have at it,” offered Quark, gesturing generously to a myriad of storage crates. Odo stared blankly at him, assessing the evident trickery at work. He kept his suspicious gaze fixed on Quark as he wordlessly opened one crate, then another. For his part, Quark observed Odo with practiced neutrality and began subtly to encroach on Odo’s space. While Odo crouched down and turned his attention to sifting through a crate full of yamok sauce packets, Quark quietly sidled to within a few centimeters of him. Satisfied that there were no artifacts to be found in that crate, Odo moved on to the next one, an insulated affair with Breen script on it that contained an impressive amount of raw jevonite. This one he upended, but it refused to yield anything suspect.

“You can look through the rest of the crates if you want,” Quark murmured, his voice like treacle poured over Andorian silk, “but you won’t find any Cardassian artifacts. Does the Captain think I’m on my first set of lobes? A good businessman would never invest in anything that controversial _or_ traceable.”

“But you’re not a good businessman,” commented the constable.

Quark placed an expensively manicured hand over his chest. “You wound me, Odo.”

“And _you’re_ up to something,” Odo replied pointedly, turning to face Quark and taking sudden stock of just how close he was standing to him. Balking, the security chief inched reflexively backwards.

“Who, me? What could I possibly be up to?” Quark lilted as he stalked after Odo, stepping over the jevonite crystals littering the floor, looming as much as his shorter stature would allow. “Go ahead. Look in the boxes; I told you I won’t stop you.” Odo promptly encountered the back wall of the storage closet, which boasted more crates and housed dusty kanar bottles on makeshift shelves. Grinning jubilantly, Quark crowded him into a bare corner and splayed a hand on the wall to each side of Odo, in an exact replica of the situation that so often caused him discomfiture.

“You’re trying to distract me,” accused Odo. Quark was incredibly pleased to note a hitch in his breath along with a heartbeat that had begun to race.

“How am I distracting you?” he purred as he eased his body flush against the constable’s. Odo shot him an alarmed glance.

“I...I don’t know,” he managed hoarsely, “but you’re up to one of your more devious tricks.”

“I’m only returning a favor, Odo,” murmured Quark.

"And just what kind of favor could this be?”

“You think being a solid interferes with your duties now, but trust me, you don’t know the half of it. Do you know how much of this aggressive proximity of yours I’ve had to tolerate over the years? And you wonder why I’m not half the businessman I could be.”

“You mean to tell me that you exist in a constant state of…this?” questioned Odo, gesturing vaguely to the most traitorous parts of his solid form. Quark realized that both of them were beginning to perspire.

“Only when I’m around you,” confessed the bartender. Even being stuck on a frozen planet had not helped matters; proximity of this degree to the man simply riled him. If Quark were to be honest enough for both of them, Odo must not have been immune either: after being compelled to sleep in very close quarters on that planet, they had both woken up in abysmal spirits the following morning.

“Hmph,” acknowledged Odo. “If something so simple can incapacitate a wanted criminal such as yourself, perhaps it would befit me to investigate you more closely.”

“You know me, Odo; I’m an open book. Investigate me as closely as you want to.”

Odo did so.


End file.
